Modernizing the Documentation of Historical Weapons Collections

[DaveA]

Hi,

Resurrecting this thread with high hopes!

I’m super interested in finding a digitized vocabulary (ontology) similar to Dublin Core for ethnographic edged weapons and other artifacts. I am currently cataloging my collection using Omeka Classic (Omeka S was overkill and too hard for my use case). I’m using Omeka to automatically generate most of a new web site for my collection (over 420 weapons plus related artifacts). The current site http://atkinson-swords.com/ is nearly 10 years out of date.

Originally Posted by dana_w

Wow! That is a great article. Have you had a chance to look at Omeka-S? It is Open Source and well documented. The most challenging part of using it is getting up to speed on how it uses the W3C Web Ontology Language (OWL). a Semantic Web language designed to represent rich and complex knowledge about things, groups of things, and relations between things.

I’d like it to include at least the following item types. I’m getting some of this from Dublin Core and other vocabularies that I’ve imported to Omeka. This list is aspirational, compiled from multiple sources. I’m sure it can be expanded (should be expanded for museum curators, for example).

Does anyone know of such a resource or can refer me elsewhere?

Key Info

• Name
• Alt Names
• Unique Collection ID
• Circa
• Condition
• Provenance
• Year Acquired
• Seller:
• Cost Paid
• Present FMV (low, high, date checked, resources used)[/RIGHT]

Descriptive Measurements

• Materials
• Design Pattern
• Maker’s Marks
• OAD inside scabbard
• OAD outside scabbard
• Blade length forte to tip
• Blade width, possibly multiple
• Blade thickness ar forte
• Blade Taper if any
• Sharpened
• Grind
• Blade cross-section

Narrative and References

• Description
• Region
• People
• History
• Story
• References
• Online
• Print
• External Links
• Internal Links

Photos

• Primary Photo
• Secondary Photos
• Hilt (both sides)
• Pommel
• Guard (both sides, down, up)
• Forte (both sides)
• Edge
• Tip
• Spine
• Prominent Features
• Marks
• Decorative Features